SEPTEMBER IS NATIONAL Disaster Preparedness Month. It’s time to raise awareness about the importance of preparing for disasters and emergencies.
This year’s theme for disaster preparedness from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, (FEMA) is, “Start the Conversation.”
Now that September is almost over, perhaps, we should amend this year’s theme to “It’s Better Late Than Never.”
Hardly a day goes by when we are not overwhelmed with graphic displays in the media of fires, hurricanes and devastating earthquakes that, thankfully, always seem to happen somewhere else. Leaving us on the Olympic Peninsula blissfully unaware that these same disasters have happened here and will invariably happen again.
We only have to look back to 1951 to remember the worse fire to hit the Peninsula in modern times.
It was a dry summer. That August, a fire had burned 1,600 acres up at Camp Creek in the Sol Duc Valley east of Forks.
The fire was put out, but this is Douglas fir country and fir has a lot of pitch that can burn underground and burst into flames when you least expect it.
That’s what happened at about 3 a.m. on Sept. 20, when a sudden drop in humidity and a strong east wind fanned the flames back to life.
The fire burned 38,000 acres in a path three miles wide that shot flames 500 feet in the air, traveling 17 miles to Forks in 8 hours.
The town was evacuated, 28 houses, a mill and millions of dollars-worth of logging bridges and machinery burned.
The rest of Forks was about to be incinerated when the wind shifted and the town was spared.
Don’t think we are safe from hurricanes on the Peninsula.
On Jan. 29, 1921, the “Big Blow” came ashore at about 9 a.m. at the mouth of the Columbia River, where the North Head lighthouse recorded gusts estimated at 150 miles per hour before the anemometer was blown away.
The storm hit Aberdeen about noon, where a man was scalded to death at a mill when a smokestack fell on him.
The storm headed north, where an estimated 2.5 million trees, or almost half of the trees on the southwest side of the Olympics, were blown over in a path of destruction said to be eight times larger than the damage caused by the eruption of Mt. St. Helens.
By 6:30, the storm had reached Forks, where it knocked down 18 barns and several houses. Sixteen homes were destroyed in La Push.
The storm continued north, hitting the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where it blew the lighthouse keeper’s bull off Tatoosh Island before moving on to Vancouver Island.
Things could’ve been worse.
Native American legends tell of an epic battle between the Thunderbird and a whale that caused a massive tidal wave.
The Quileute tell of a wave that stretched across the horizon.
The Makah say Cape Flattery became an island.
The Clallam escaped by tying their canoes to the top of Unicorn Peak up near Hurricane Ridge.
Although their interpretation of the cause and timing of these events may differ, geologists have since discovered tsunami debris from the Copalis River north to Neah Bay and east to Discovery Bay that confirm the devastation of a Cascadia Subduction Zone event.
The most recent occurred on Jan. 26, 1700.
It’s not if, but when it happens again.
We could have a 9-plus magnitude earthquake and a 100-foot-high tsunami slamming into our shore in as little as 15 minutes later.
These disasters have happened before we had a modern population and infrastructure.
They will happen again.
It doesn’t hurt to prepare.
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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.
He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.
